"I found myself in AA," said the man in the meeting the other evening, and for a moment you could see that the other people in there were puzzled, wondering exactly what he meant.

Did he mean "I found myself in AA" -- that his life spiraled into a chaos he could neither understand nor control because of his drinking, and that one day he realized he was sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, drawing his first sober breaths in many years? This has been the experience of many of us -- that a Power greater than ourselves seems somehow to have contrived to get us into Program, without any conscious action on our part.

Or did he mean "I found myself in AA"? Was he saying that he had been lost for so many years, and that when he came to Program and began to work the Steps, he suddenly realized that God was doing for him what he could not do for himself, and that in this process he realized he had found what had been lost?

Or did he mean "I found myself" in AA"? This is the reward of the last three Steps of Program. We find ourselves in a way we never expected or understood before. Even when we were working Steps 1 through 9, even with the warning of Step 3 ringing in our ears, we really pursued our will 99% of the time and God's will 1% of the time. In the practice of Steps 10, 11 and 12, we find ourselves by losing ourselves. We are in sense a new creation, a creation that is not the result of getting what we wanted or losing what we disliked, but of surrendering ourselves completely to God so that we become instead what he wants.